10 days in May

May has been a whirlwind of activity. It's been crazy.

Wednesday, 10 May
Today I sat my first exam in a horribly long time. I've been thinking about getting a teaching credential and the first step is the CBEST test. I started thinking about it last year and realised my math skills were not up to par... even though you only need 6th grade math! So I had to do some studying. And then this thing with the house blew up and I put it on the back burner. And then even though I haven't studied in months for it, I got sick of it sitting in the back of my head and in an act of madness last week booked the test. And this morning I sat a four hour exam, which I haven't done in over twenty years....

Also today, Jeff came home from work with a new bike! Once a quarter the company holds a meeting and gives away a beach cruiser to the most valuable employee. Jeff said he was stunned when he heard his name, he wasn't expecting it at all! The new CEO started today so he met the new CEO right after being named the most valuable employee... not a bad start!

Thursday, 11 May
Appraisal day. This is what we've been working for for the last six months. The house was uninhabitable when we first put our offer in. We knew we had three major problems - the empty pool, the kitchen, and three bathrooms that didn't work. Not to mention all the stained and damaged drywall. We now have a safety cover over the pool, a gorgeous new kitchen, and three bathrooms that work, one of which has been completely redone. I have been so worried about this appraisal. I think it went ok. We did all kinds of creative staging to hide the window that the drywallers broke (which we will fix, just not yet!). Jeff had to dash out to Home Depot mid-appraisal because we'd forgotten that you need smoke alarms. But it's done, and now we wait.

Friday, 12 May
Today I got some gorgeous flowers! Totally a surprise. They were from Jeff's work because he had to work until 3am on our anniversary and he'll be working until midnight on my birthday. And Jeff called me to say that he might be getting promoted. Fingers crossed!

Today is also Kate's birthday. She's being a total sport and agreed not to have one, yet. We're too busy.

Monday, 15th May
A crazy day on the phone. The appraiser marked the appraisal as subject to carpets, vent covers, exterior paint and a tap in the downstairs bathroom (which is sitting there on the vanity but is not yet connected). We're not doing exterior paint this week. There's no way. So we had to push back a little to get the appraiser to change it to an 'as-is' appraisal. The mortgage company agreed with us that everything he'd called out was cosmetic, so by the end of the day we had approval and we are good to go! I've finally started packing, now that I know this is actually going to happen. I haven't fully believed it up until now!

Thursday, 18 May
Not my birthday. I'm not having one this year. Too busy. And too poor for presents! Poor Jeff got $250 of plumbing supplies on his birthday so I'd rather skip a birthday rather than get the interior door knobs or the rest of the smoke alarms that we need. I fielded one scary phone call from the carpet people who say they may not be ready to put in carpet tomorrow as planned. I told them they needed to make it work. We're moving in on Saturday come what may.

Friday, 19 May
We signed!! We had to drive hours away to Westlake Village (north of LA) for some very important reason that I have totally forgotten at this point. It was an eight hour round trip! Totally bonkers. But we signed papers! IT'S DONE!

It was a bit of a surreal day. I have spent months not allowing myself to believe that we could actually pull this off. And we did. And my brain is still not quite believing it, out of habit. It will take a while to adjust itself, I think!

Also today I found out that I passed my CBEST test, so I can now be a substitute teacher. And Jeff was officially promoted. All in all, a pretty great day.

Saturday, 20 May
Move in day! Total chaos. Exhausting. But the start of a new chapter! There is still plenty to do, so there will continue to be house reports on the blog for a while. But hopefully a somewhat more normal blog service can now resume. Thanks for sticking with me!

ETA: I wrote this a while ago. Looking back, a lot of great things happened in May but I hope I never have a month like that again. We were working until 11:30 at the house most nights. It was so exhausting and totally draining... but the end result was worth it! Normal blog service did not resume, because the computer where the pictures and blog live did not have an internet connection until very recently.... maybe now I will get my act together and post some more updates. There are plenty!